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Island Birds Behaving Badly
Destinations · June 15, 2003

Key Largo is for the birds.

Roseate spoonbills stand like statues in the shallow saltwater flats. Broad-winged hawks cut circles in a cloudless tropical sky. And yellow-crowned night heron perch on the sulfur-scented mangroves at low tide.

But this being the Florida Keys, the eclectic island chain that stretches more than 100 miles from here to Key West, the bird encounters can also be a little … odd.

Like the brown pelicans that act like puppies, nipping at your heels. Or the flocks of emerald-green, obscenity-spouting Amazon parrots that darken the skies by the hundreds. Or the peacocks - screaming, brilliantly-colorful peacocks.

The strange birds are everywhere on this island.

Maybe that's a good thing. Birding is a wildly popular activity these days. A recent survey by the U.S. Department of the Interior and Fish and Wildlife Service found that 18 million Americans a year go bird-watching on vacation. In the Upper Keys, a place better known for its fishing and scuba diving, about a quarter of visitors come to observe wildlife, according to the county's Tourist Development Council.

But the tourism brochures don't tell you about this kind of wildlife.

Take the brown pelican, which is easily one of Florida's friendliest fowl. Marinas and fisheries are ideal places to get up-close to this awkward-looking bird. Unfortunately, pelicans also risk injury from fish hooks and filament, which may explain why there are so many of them in rehab at the nearby Florida Keys Wild Bird Center.

But do these winged creatures think they're canines? If you head over to the center for its afternoon feeding at around 3 p.m., you might be forgiven for thinking so. A gaggle of restless birds waddles along a wooden walkway to the bay following closely behind the food trolley. These pelicans will let you know if you get in the way, tapping the back of your leg, rustling their wings and squawking for you to hurry up. None of them have asked to play a game of fetch with a visitor. Yet.

A rarer sight in Key Largo is a flock of parrots descending on the endangered hardwood hammocks. The Amazon parrots, which are known for their feisty disposition, aren't native to the Keys, but that doesn't mean they're any less welcome here. Residents have been known to compare notes on the Amazon sightings as if they were beholding the mythical green flash at sunset.

But not all Amazon sightings go as expected. The flock is enormous - perhaps several hundred birds in size - and extremely noisy. When it lands in the trees or on a power line, the chatter is so loud that having a conversation on the ground is impossible. Many of the Amazons were once pets, and there are people who swear they've heard words among the shrieks and squawks, not all of which are suitable for publication.

The peacocks, on the other hand, are an annoyance to residents of Key Largo (if not a delight to visitors). The colorful birds, most of which live on Plantation Key, group in lesser numbers than the parrots - only four known flocks of between 30 and 40 birds have been spotted. But what they lack in size they make up for in sound. Their cat-like howls can be heard across the island from dawn to dusk.

According to local legend, a children's book author named Herbert Zim imported the peafowl more than two decades ago, where they eventually escaped. Surviving in the Keys wasn't difficult for the birds. The peacocks' only natural enemy is the tiger, and there are no known tigers running wild in the Upper Keys. At least for the time being.

The birds aren't the only odd animals living in the Keys, of course. Almost every one of the islands has a population of exotic iguanas, which are native to Central America but get along just fine up here. And at the end of the line, in Key West, Hemingway's six-toed cats roam the neighborhood around Whitehead Street.

They're not nearly as odd as the people. But that's another story.

Christopher Elliott and Kari Haugeto are travel writers based in Key Largo, Fla.